


Cat Got Nine Lives

by Kleenexwoman



Category: Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for epicycles for the 2010 Down the Chimney gift exchange. The prompts are as follows: Drowning, music, parallel universes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cat Got Nine Lives

The last song Illya ever hears in this life is "Cat Got Nine Lives," by Crazy Louie Wain. It's a silly song, more a novelty than anything, but he likes the way the music expresses the idea of the cat--the slinky, tiptoeing duet of sax and piano, the screech of fiddle and brush against the snare drum to mimic the sound of a cat scratching, even the musical purr of guitar at the end. He turns the radio up and sings along with the chorus and callbacks, snapping his fingers:

_They say that cat, he had nine lives  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)  
And in each life, he had nine wives  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)  
Each swinging wife, she had nine litters  
And in each litter was nine kitters  
Kitters, litters, wives and lives  
I met them going to Saint JIVES!  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)_

Napoleon laughs, and says he prefers dogs. "They're loyal, smart, they come when they're called...Cats are too sneaky."

"Loyal! Dogs will bite you for no reason. Cats, now, cats are easy to read," Illya counters, "they have two moods--unhappy, and fed."

Napoleon reminisces about a beagle he had as a child, which leads Illya to recall an eyeless goldfish he kept in university. "Its name was Fsh," he says, and the hour is so late and the paperwork has been so dull that Napoleon laughs.

These small, stupid moments are what Illya will regret losing, every time he dies.

*

The assignment he dies on isn't supposed to be an especially dangerous one. It's only information-gathering on a new THRUSH project, and the procedure is straightforward--disguise self as THRUSH higher-up, get in, interview Dr. Hildebrandt, and get out. It isn't Illya's usual speed, especially without Napoleon, but theoretical quantum physics, Hildebrandt's area of expertise, is something very few other UNCLE personnel have the background to understand.

It's relatively easy to infiltrate the compound with a faux THRUSH uniform, and soon Hildebrandt is making raspberry tea for Illya and chatting about the infinite possiblities of the fifth dimension. "Probabilities don't collapse, you see," he explains, his teeth tea-stained behind his salt-and-pepper beard. "If you put a cat in a box with a decaying isotope and close it...well, Schrodinger suggested it, and I know for a fact that some of our boys have tried it. Except not with cats. Sugar?"

Illya takes three cubes. "I know the story," he says. "Once you open the box, one probability collapses."

"Only from our point of view! From Fluffy's point of view, he has merely escaped into a universe where that isotope has not yet decayed. God doesn't play dice with the lives of cats. Cream? No, not with raspberry, correct? It would curdle."

"Unless there is a universe in which it does not curdle," Illya offers.

"Don't be ridiculous. There is no universe in which cream never curdles. And as such, there is no universe where the cat never dies--but we can stave that off, for a time."

Hildebrandt shows off his prototype, a metal box in which he has placed a rod, glowing black. "The Quantum Decoupler. It forces probability towards the continuity of consciousness. Imagine--no matter what happens, a being which touches it will continue living until there is literally no other option."

"Clever," Illya agrees. He reaches out to brush the glowing black bar with his fingers, and Hildebrandt yanks the box back. "May I see your notes?"

"Oh, certainly," Hildebrandt agrees, and leads Illya to his desk. As Illya rifles through pages and pages of scrawled, crumpled papers, Hildebrandt adds, "Unfortunately, it's not perfected yet. But you shouldn't worry. In just a moment, your consciousness will merely jump--"

Illya cannot even turn around before the gun behind him goes off and he dies.

*

"--jump into a parallel universe," Hildebrandt continues, "precisely equivalent to this one but for the position of at least one atom. I've tested it on mice. It's very strange. There's a phase shift, and then nothing, but their quantum signature changes just very slightly..."

Illya whirls around, gun in his hand. Hildebrandt looks shocked. He is holding a pencil in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. "Quantum signature chances upset you?" he asks.

"Yes," Illya says vaguely, "they're very confusing." Something has happened, somewhere, that would demand the presence of the gun in his hand. Something scared him. Hurt him. But he isn't hurt or scared now, merely impressed by Hildebrandt's equations. The concept is solid, the bugs to be worked out very few. It's not a superweapon, but whichever side possesses it would have immense tactical advantage. UNCLE agents all dying of nothing but old age while THRUSH agents drop like flies...

"How much funding do you think you'd need?" he asks finally, and Hildebrandt names a ridiculous figure. Illya scribbles down a few key equations on a piece of scrap paper, whistling the chorus to "Cat Got Nine Lives."

"Hey, that's by Crazy Christie Smart!" Hildebrandt exclaims. "One of my favorites."

Illya shakes his head. "Louie Wain," he says. "RCA, 1939."

"Christie Smart," Hildebrandt says, "Tower Records, 1941. I remember the year it came out." He begins to sing:

_They say that cat had forty wives  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)  
Each jealous wife had forty knives  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW) _

"Must be a cover version," Illya mutters, and leaves.

He can't quite remember how to leave the compound. It's nothing very impressive, merely a series of dingy halls that bear more resemblance to a community college than to a top-secret laboratory. Although he'd studied the map of the compound beforehand, dead ends and intersections confound him, pop up where he doesn't remember them and fail to appear where he does.

The guard who notices him can't be past seventeen. The first time Illya passes him, he's standing straight at attention, looking terrified. The second time, he's not as ramrod-straight, and looks Illya in the eye. The third time, he's slouching against the wall.

Illya glares at him. "Is that any way for a security guard to look?" he asks. "Stand up straight, for god's sake, and show me the way out of here."

The boy gives him one of the coldest looks Illya has ever seen. "Right this way, sir," he says, and shoves himself away from the wall. He looks like a juvenile delinquent, not any kind of soldier--Illya remembers his type, street punks rounded up off the streets of Moscow and shoved unhappily into a uniform.

Illya wonders, sometimes, where THRUSH recruits their foot soldiers. Job fairs? Street gangs? Prisons? It's a question that few resources have been devoted to. Illya resolves to propose the idea to Mr. Waverly. Perhaps they will never find out.

Likewise, Illya will never get to find out whether the sharp thing stabbing into his vertebrae was a THRUSH-issued dagger or a homemade shiv, whether the boy was a keen-eyed assassin spotting an imposter or merely a psychopathic delinquent pushed to the breaking point. It doesn't take him as long to die, but when he does--

*

\--he is allowing a small white mouse to run over and over his hands, cupping his palms and moving them so that the mouse has an infinite plain of hand in front of it. It is the last time he will see this particular mouse, or perhaps the last time this mouse will see this particular him. Hildebrandt hasn't worked out which one it is yet. Illya thinks it all depends on whether you are speaking from the viewpoint of the researcher or of the mouse.

He places the mouse (Benjy) into a small carrying cage. The mouse squeaks unhappily, and Illya runs a finger over its tiny, warm back. Benjy and his rodent cousins are so small, so dependent and easily breakable. Illya whistles under his breath, sneaking a glance at Hildebrandt.

_That cat is slinking down the stairs  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)  
Mice watch out, oh, best beware!  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW) _

The mice are inexpensive and can be bought from any pet store; the rest of the materials are not. Hildebrandt is fortunate that THRUSH took an interest in his Quantum Decoupler, or he'd still be trying to synthesize the necessary elements from bits of purple rocks in the Sonoran Desert. Or, rather, he's fortunate that Illya Kuryakin, one of THRUSH's senior science officers, happened across a particularly fascinating paper on quantum immortality that Hildebrandt wrote.

A new thought occurs to Illya. He turns to Hildebrandt. "I wonder if the application could be reversed?"

"Hmm?" Hildebrandt looks up from his raspberry tea. "How so?"

"A way to reverse the goal of the probability manipulation," Illya says. "Not guaranteeing virtual immortality, but the opposite--making it so that at the first opportunity, the affected party would perish. Making everything go wrong. You could never pin a death on anyone--it would be caused by sheer carelessness, sheer chance, every time."

Hildebrandt shrugs. "It could be done. Perhaps not with the Decoupler...it would require a collapse of all probability wavelengths, instead of a forced integration of possibilities. But the only thing it could possibly result in would be instant death. Still suspicious, no?"

"No," Illya argues, "not very--not if it merely pushed probability towards demise. A car crash, a piano dropping from the sky, being in the wrong place at the wrong time..."

"But there are infinite ways to die!" Hildebrandt exclaims. He points at the ceiling. "At any moment, those beams could fail, and a thousand tons of rock and plaster could fall on us." He points to the floor. "A sinkhole could open up in the floor." He places his hand on his heart. "I could have a heart attack. An aneurysm. I could choke on my own tongue. All of this could happen at once! It's only very good luck that keeps that all from happening, really."

"I'll keep an eye out for sinkholes," Illya says, and carries Benjy over to the Decoupler. Hildebrandt's discouragement has only made the idea more attractive--imagine, dropping a thousand pounds of rock on an UNCLE agent at the same time he has a heart attack, gets eaten by a shark, is shot by a thousand snipers...

He drops a protesting Benjy into the Decoupler and closes the lid. Hildebrandt counts down from thirty, carefully keeping an eye on the particle detector they've set up. As usual, fifteen seconds in, there is an almost unnoticeable glow from the box and the detectors register a phase shift.

When Illya pulls Benjy out, Benjy latches his teeth onto Illya and refuses to let go. "Stupid brat!" Illya scolds him, shaking his hand over the cage. Benjy lets go, but gnashes his tiny teeth at Illya through the bars.

Illya's felt worse. He's been stabbed and shot and lived through it. Benjy's never bitten him before, but Illya rationalizes that you can only drop someone into a closed radioactive box so many times before they get upset.

But as Hildebrandt pours hydrogen peroxide on the wound and carefully wraps it in a bandage, Illya is beginning to feel shaky, sick, tired. The waves of nausea wait until his hand is dressed, and as Illya hunches over the toilet, trying not to retch, he tugs at his hair experimentally. It comes away easily in his hand.

"Benjy's dead," Hildebrandt calls from the laboratory. "All shriveled up. His hair fell out, too. I suppose we've hit a barrier. Now, do you think it was the dosage, or the number of turns he's had in the Decoupler? He must have been in there a few dozen times..."

Illya's vision begins to cloud. "Probably the dosage," he calls weakly. The signs of radiation sickness are unmistakable, the damage irreversible. It occurs to him, as his eyes close, that he doesn't much care whether the entire base is irradiated, whether the entire high command structure of THRUSH becomes irradiated.

*

New York glows blackly against the night sky. Illya can barely recognize the skyline, but he's not sure if it's because of the damage done by the bombs, or merely because he's spent more time traveling the North American continent with Napoleon, in self-conscious quarantine from the irradiated city, than he ever did living in it.

Napoleon's built a fire more for the sake of having something to huddle around than for the warmth, and Illya stays away from it. A campfire on top of the chemical ooze of the New Jersey Meadowlands would be dangerous enough without the strange, accident-causing radiation that may or may not still be leaching across from the city; Illya fully expected Napoleon to have accidentally situated it on top of an old gas pipe, a stockpile of toxic waste, or the bloated body of a Mafia victim.

He can hear a crackle as Napoleon pokes at the fire. "It's like a dream," Napoleon says finally. "I never thought we'd see it again."

"Well," Illya says, "we have. It's there. It's still..." He gestures at the black glow that blots out the stars. "We saw what we came to see, Napoleon, can we leave? Tomorrow? Now?"

Napoleon gazes thoughtfully at what might be the Empire State Building or perhaps a rusted-out crane. "I didn't cross the continent just to look at it."

Illya sighs and searches in his bag for his lead-lined blanket. Not that it will help. The strange black radiation pervades everything it touches, causing more inexplicable heart attacks, falling debris, and death from walking into open manholes than it does deaths from the radiation itself. But they haven't died today yet, and they might even make it out of the city alive.

The next morning is calm and only a little hazy, and when they finally make their way to the waters of the Hudson, there is barely a ripple in the river's flow.

Illya keeps expecting a tidal wave to roar up out of nowhere and overwhelm them, or a shark to bite them. He remembers how treacherous it was to come within miles of the city, when the bombs fell. There had been earthquakes, floods out of nowhere, cars crashing for no reason.

But there is no sign of the black glow in the cool light of the day. The skyscrapers and tenements are crumbling, odd chunks taken out of them where they dropped their bricks and stones on unlucky people. Illya carefully skirts the skeletons whose hands reach out from rubble piles, whose legs stick out from under parked cars, who clutch their chests or temples even in the motionless throes of death. Napoleon barely seems to notice them, stepping over the ribcages and skulls as though they were trash on the streets, eyes focused somewhere far away.

He has a bad moment when he turns to Napoleon and Napoleon isn't there. Illya frantically retraces his steps through broken right angles, the detritus of a shattered grid, and finds Napoleon in what he thinks used to be Times Square, unharmed. A billboard has shattered at his feet, and he's staring at the rusty orange sky.

Illya puts his hand on Napoleon's shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Just surprised," Napoleon murmurs. He nudges the rubble with his foot. "It missed me. And this is Ground Zero, it's where the first bomb fell--if the radiation is almost gone from here, the rest of the city must be safe." His face lights up for the first time in years. "We can start bringing people back."

Behind them, a crashed car creaks slightly. Illya whirls around to see a black glow emerging from the shattered vehicle.

"Napoleon..." he says, under his breath, trusting that Napoleon will hear it, that whatever is bringing the black glow with it will not.

A small black thing slinks out of the car. Napoleon crouches down. "It's harmless," he says. "Just a cat. Here, kitty, here..."

"It's dangerous," Illya insists. "It's irradiated."

"It's alive," Napoleon says, his voice tinged with wonder. He purses his lips and makes kissing noises at the cat. "Here, pussy."

The black glow moves closer to them, and Illya can feel foreboding in his bones, the metallic taste of doom in his mouth. "Stop it." He jumps up and down and waves his arms at the cat. "Shoo! Out! Don't come near!"

The cat mews pitifully and crouches a few yards away from them, green eyes wide. Illya picks up a chunk of rock and weighs it in his hand. "It may be immune," he says to Napoleon, "but we aren't."

Napoleon grins at Illya. "Ah, but we've made it this far, haven't we? Just like kitty here."

The cat plucks up its courage and pads the rest of the way across the square, and Illya holds his breath. He can feel the very earth shift beneath his feet, the island moving rock and water and concrete in an epic ballet of subtlety that will crush them both.

Perversely, the cat heads for Illya. Illya, knowing the habits of cats, can see it now: The creature will rub its bedraggled form against Illya's shin, transfer its glowing black radiation to him, and then the earth will open to swallow him up, the waves will rush through the streets to fill his lungs, the sky will choose to drop a meteor on his head.

He throws the rock at the cat. The cat yowls discordantly, and it's the last thing Illya hears. He never meets to get the woman who shot him, a resourceful and similarly glowing bachelorette who prowls the streets with her cat, both of them somehow immune to the radiation that pervaded the city. He never witnesses Napoleon's inevitable romance with her, devoid of physical contact until Napoleon can stand it no longer, kisses her, and a few moments later stumbles backwards into the Hudson River.

*

Ilena Kuryakin fishes Polly Solo out of the Hudson River easily. Polly crawls onto the dock and spits out a mouthful of mucky water. Her black hair straggles down her neck, sending rivulets of water dripping down her already soaked suit jacket. In the distance, Ilena can see the little white motorboat with the little black bird on the side speeding away along the Hudson.

"It never fails," Polly gasps. She gags on a piece of seaweed and spits it out. "Every time I get my hair done, some joker pushes me into the drink."

Ilena helps her stand up. "Nobody pushed you," she points out, "you missed the deck. I told you, leave the jumping to me when you're wearing a skirt."

"You were a block away!" Polly protests. She grabs Ilena's communicator, shaped like a tube of lipstick (which Ilena thinks arouses more suspicion on her person than a pen or pack of cigarettes ever would, but there's no arguing with Miz Waverly about these things). "Solo here. No, we didn't get them--we know where they're headed. Statue of Liberty. It's some kind of bomb, or...no, I didn't get the specifics."

Ilena grabs the communicator back. "A nuclear device of some sort. They're planning to denotate it from the torch. All we need to do is get to the torch before they do, but there isn't a boat in sight."

Polly taps her on the shoulder. "Actually..."

Of course, Polly's found a rather muscular sailor who happens to have his own rather wretched sailboat on the water, and of course the deal he strikes involves sailing them to Liberty Island while Polly slowly unbuttons her top. Ilena keeps an eye on the statue and the other on Polly, half worried and half guiltily jealous.

But once they get to the island, Polly is all business, pressing a quick kiss to the sailor's cheek before sprinting off the boat and heading towards the statue at a dead run. Ilena follows her across the grass, wending through the startled tourists. And when Polly gives the line to the elevator a cursory glance and begins to climb the copper edifice of the statue itself, hand over hand, Ilena sighs, makes sure her wire cutters are securely fastened to her belt, and jumps onto the statue, resisting the temptation to look up at just the right angle.

They reach the top, and Polly punches someone while Ilena works on the device (an odd contraption glowing black) and then someone falls off the statue, which really is an accident because they do prefer to interrogate people later, and then Ilena cries out in triumph because the device has stopped glowing and New York is saved.

Polly likes to celebrate. Ilena likes to relax. Polly likes to dance, and she'll do it with anyone. Ilena doesn't like to dance, but she does like to sit at a table for two in a smoky dyke bar and watch Polly dance, especially when the music is good. And the music is very good tonight--underground jazz sensation Sasha Fierce is here with her backing band, her famous robotic hand (Ilena recalls that she received it from a wealthy secret admirer after a devastating car crash) glittering in the faint spotlight, singing:

_And oh, this cat, she had some claws  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)  
Like daggers in those pretty paws  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)  
I tell you, she could really SCRATCH!  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW) _

As Sasha begins to scat-sing, raising her gleaming hand in the air, Polly comes back to their table, panting a little and grinning. "Gee, your friends are fun. I don't think I've danced alone once tonight."

"They can be very enthusiastic," Ilena agrees.

Polly holds out her hand to Ilena, and Ilena shakes her head. Polly sighs. "I hate to see you just sitting here while I'm having fun."

"I'm having fun. Go dance more. Or sit here with me."

Polly straddles her chair backwards, looking for all the world like the bored schoolgirl she was when she first joined A.U.N.T.Y. "Just one dance? Please?" She bats her lashes at Ilena, and Ilena rolls her eyes and gets up.

Polly grabs Ilena's hand and drags her out to the dance floor just as Fierce switches songs. "This one is for all you lovers out there," she coos into the mic, and launches into a breathy, eerie rendition of "Earth Angel," by the Penguins.

"You lead," Polly says, and Ilena puts her arms around Polly's waist. Polly smiles at her, and Ilena closes her eyes and presses her lips to Polly's.

Polly stops. "Oh," she says. "That's not really what I meant."

"Sorry," Ilena mutters, her face burning. She pulls away from Polly.

Polly follows her back to their table. "It's not like I wouldn't, you know, if I liked girls at all. I mean, I don't. I like you. But it's just not--"

"Fine. Yes. I understand." Ilena pretends to busy herself by collecting the empty glasses on the table. "It's all right. Forget it. I'll see you Monday, or whenever."

"--not something I ever thought..." Polly trails off. When Ilena turns around, she's gone.

She orders another vodka tonic, and another. The night stretches on, and soon she looks up and nearly everyone is gone, except for the beauty with copper curls and a robotic hand sitting across from her.

"Got shot down?" Sasha Fierce's cool voice winds around her head, pervasive as the smoke that hovers in the air. A cold, shining metal hand covers Ilena's, pats it sympathetically. "It's too bad. You two looked good together."

"We work well together. I thought there might be a chance." Ilena puts her head down. "It happens to everyone, doesn't it? Stupid, hopeless crush."

"Sure does," Sasha agrees. "It's just part of life. But you don't have to be disappointed all the time, baby."

There's compassion in her voice, but when Ilena looks up, she sees seduction in those dark brown eyes. She lifts up the robotic hand and presses the cool metal to her lips. "Surely you've never been disappointed. Rejected."

"All the time," Sasha says, "all the time." Her hand goes to Ilena's hair, stroking the fine golden strands. And Sasha Fierce is disappointed once more (as well as terrified) when her hand, seemingly of its own mysterious accord, grips her new friend Ilena's skull and flings her like a ragdoll across the room.

The THRUSH radio transmitter that Polly later finds in Sasha's (now disembodied) hand is no consolation for the traumatized Sasha Fierce, or for the regretful Polly Solo, who wishes for the rest of her life that she'd just kissed Ilena back.

*

The stately U.N.C.L.E. dirigible floats protectively amongst the clouds, high above the bustling metropolis of New Amsterdam. Its disguise as a mere merchant vessel holds a double purpose, for not only does it prevent the peaceful citizens of the largest city in the Federation of Columbian States from knowing or caring about who patrols the skies above, it is the perfect decoy and trap for the dreaded Thrush-Birds, the mysterious association of sky pirates who plague and terrorize each and every free country on the globe.

Illya always likes to sit by the windows as the dirigible passes the famous statue of the Goddess Columbia, symbol and patron of the New World. It offers not only an unparalleled view of the city, but a perfect lookout for the Thrush-Bird threat. As the scenery before him passes, smoky and gleaming and rag-tag colorful, he almost absent-mindedly works on his latest invention, an object that Napoleon has dubbed The Bang-Bang Glove. Illya tries to stress that the things he creates are not solely used for the art of war, but have many interesting and instructive other features...but he does concede that an uncanny number of them have the ability to cause immense explosions.

He slips it on, turning his hand back and forth, admiring the gleam of the smoky sky off the copper of the glove. "I think it's finished," he calls to Napoleon, whose attention is on the casually exposed ankle of a pretty young typist.

"Hmm?" Napoleon glances at Illya, back to the typist's ankle, and back to Illya as the typist quickly tucks her foot under her desk. Napoleon rises just in time to miss a light whack on the back of his head with her fan. "Fantastic!" he exclaims. "Shall we test it?"

Illya concedes, and soon they are seated on the viewing platform on top of the dirigible, thermoses of tea strapped to their belts. Illya slips on the glove. "Notice how the coarse velvet of the glove itself and the chainmail over it combine to create the perfect gripping surface for climbing while still being fine enough to brush against a lady's cheek."

"I would say that the rather large and chunky ammunition chamber on the back of the contraption would disqualify it from being a tool of seduction," Napoleon says, "however, I know more than a few very fine young ladies for whom it would merely be an added attraction. Carry on."

Illya grins. "Notice that seagull yonder," he says, and extends his index finger. The gull, some hundred yards away, is immediately shot down with a squawk. "The index finger contains sleeping darts. The ring and pinkie, bent down together, produce a concussive wave which I hesitate to engage on top of this dirigible. From the thumb--" and he cocks his thumb, "emits a bright light which would turn night to day."

"And the other?" Napoleon asks.

Illya displays his middle finger to the sky, as if defying the strange blackness that has begun to gather at the horizon. A thin plume of orange flame shoots out of the tip, blossoming into a fiery chrysanthemum above their heads.

As though Illya's fireball has turned the clouds into ash, the strange blackness begins to break apart, forming itself into what looks like...

"Thrush-Birds!" exclaims Illya.

Napoleon barely has time to pull his Communique Device out of his pocket, unfold it, unwind the antenna, and tune it to the proper frequency before the Thrush-Birds are upon them. Their atrocious avian automatons swoop upon the dirigible, screaming metallic cries and ripping at the balloon with their reinforced steel claws, their sharp and jagged beaks. And then come the airships, sleek and shining rusty red...

Illya aims his flame-thrower at the metal birds first, watching them stiffen and suddenly fall from the sky as the delicate gears that flap their wings and open their beaks melt under the heat of his flame. They bounce off the surface of the dirigible, and he fancies he can hear the hisses as the red-hot birds douse themselves in the water of the Hudson.

The airships hover over the dirigible, and long black ropes descend from their slim bellies. Illya aims his flamethrower at the ropes, but he is out of fuel, and he makes a mental note to enlarge the fuel reservoirs. He and Napoleon stand side by side, Napoleon with his spring-loaded sleep-dart slingshot, and Illya with the Bang-Bang Glove, dropping Thrush-Birds as they shimmy and slide down the ropes. Illya knows that the rakishly dressed, cutlass-toting pirates descending upon them are merely the foot soldiers of the Thrush-Birds, that the infamous black zeppelin that looms just out of sight on the horizon hold the eerily genteel brain-trust of the Thrush-Birds.

When the black zeppelin hoists into view, Illya cocks the glove.

Napoleon grabs his wrist. "Wait," he says. "The concussive wave--you said it wasn't safe."

"I said I would hesitate!" Illya corrects him. "The concussive wave is merely untested, and what better testing grounds? But I warn you, my friend, cling to something very solid."

He takes a deep breath, then points his gleaming hand at the Thrush-Bird zeppelin and bends his fingers down.

The blast ripples through the air and hits the zeppelin, and there is a brief moment where all reality seems to shift before it immolates in an astounding fireball. The heat from the fire kisses Illya's face, and then he is slipping, sliding helplessly off the rounded surface of the dirigible. He reaches for Napoleon's hand, regrets the fear and loss evident on Napoleon's face even as his fingertips lose contact with the balloon and touch thin air.

He hits the water with a cold splash, the brilliant orange of the Thrush-Bird explosion growing fainter and bluer, rippled and tossed by the currents in between his eyes and the air. As the light grows dim, he cocks his thumb back, the light from the Bang-Bang Glove a shining beacon of fatal need that will be seen too late.

*

The water is warm and comfortable, slipping past Illya's scaled skin like silk. He maneuvers in the currents easily with his webbed hands and feet, dipping and gliding as strands of seaweed caress his face and limbs. He feels light and lazy. The frigid waters of Russia are nothing like this blue-green heaven, the stern and bony sturgeon nothing like the frilled, colorful tropical fish that dance and play along his drifing body. Every so often, he scoops one up and pops it into his mouth, savoring the delicate taste, but it does not scare the rest of them off. They must never see another one like me, he thinks, and the thought is exciting.

Exploration in perfect solitude is what Illya swam across the world for, but exploration without a friend can get dull; what use is it, after all, to uncover a sunken treasure or happen upon a perfect coral mound without being able to show it to another, to share in burbles of delight and curious proddings? Illya sinks into the pale golden sand, tired and a little sad. The ocean is full of beauty, but it does not care about him.

The sand beneath him is squishy, solid, and moves out from under him almost as soon as he settles in. A black cloud of something dances before his eyes, but Illya quickly waves it away, peering through the water to try to locate this new feature of the ocean floor.

It's an octopus, hovering in the water before him, poised to flit away. Illya freezes. Octopus! He's only ever heard stories of the eight-armed invertebrates that his ancestors hunted, first to take their territory and then for food. They were curious, tricky...and tasty. Perhaps this octopus has heard stories of his ancestors, too. It would be a shame--Illya has no desire to taste this octopus, but he could use a friend.

Illya slowly lets himself unfold in the water, his arms and legs drifting out in the gentle currents. The octopus relaxes too, letting his tentacles spread. Illya waves his arm in a gentle greeting, and the octopus mirrors his wave, wiggling his tentacles with an inviting flourish. Illya imitates the wiggle, his whole body shaking.

The octopus flares its tentacles and jets off, and Illya stares at it, disappointed that his gesture of friendship was misinterpreted. But after a moment, the octopus comes back. It floats before Illya, then reaches out to him. Illya reaches too, hoping to touch the octopus, but the octopus yanks his tentacles back. It lingers in the water for a moment, then swims off again. This time, Illya paddles after it.

Just as Illya is getting tired of skimming over the ocean floor after the octopus, the octopus darts behind what looks like a huge pile of stones in the middle of a seaweed forest. Illya cautiously paddles after it, and when he emerges, they are in the midle of a stunning, varicolored forest of coral.

Illya and the octopus chase each other through the reef, whirling around outcroppings of bright blue towers, looping through elegant pink arches, the octopus rippling through color changes to stealthily camouflage itself or draw bright contrasting desgins with its tentacles. When Illya is exhausted, they hunt fish together, the octopus showing Illya how to cover himself with sand and lay out bait, choice pieces of seaweed or little worms that live in the sand, so that the gentle little morsels will flock to him. Illya even makes up a little song, happy with his new friend:

_The octopus is really great  
(blubblub, blubblub, blubblub, blubblub)  
Everything he has is eight  
(blubblub, blubblub, blubblub, blubblub)  
He is the best friend I could wish  
(blubblub, blubblub, blubblub, blubblub)  
He helps me find tasty fish  
(blubblub, blubblub, blubblub, blubblub) _

He sings it to the octopus. He's not sure if the octopus can understand the language of Illya's people, but the rhythmic vibrations seem to please it. It turns a beautiful bright red and begins to twirl slowly in the water, waving its tentacles to the bubbling beat of Illya's song.

And so the two friends spent their days in warm water and bright coral, never understanding a word of each others' language, but not needing to. Sadly, octopi don't live that long, and soon after the octopus dies a natural and painless death, Illya gets careless and is eaten by a shark. Such things happen in the ocean.

*

Il-ya huddles in his furs, absurdly warm in the unaccustomed heat of these hills, but not willing to give up the protection and bulk they offer him. He feels absurdly delicate and strange next to the cave-dwellers, dark and stocky as they are, and is acutely aware that this is the root of their suspicion towards him, the reason they've forced him to sleep outside instead of allowing him to curl up safely in their cave. But it's a calm night, with bright stars that look different from the ones he sees at home, and he is content for the moment to count and name them.

A shadow slips out of the mouth of the cave, and Il-ya stiffens, then relaxes. It is R'Bear, the youth in whom he hopes he has made a friend. When the cave-dwellers had dragged him into their cave, shouting at the others that here was a stranger, that they would have to throw stones at him until he died, it was this youth who stood up and proclaimed that he would take responsibility for Il-ya's conduct among the tribe. He had knelt at Il-ya's feet and untied the leather cords that bound his wrists and ankles, looking up at him with big brown eyes that begged for something Il-ya couldn't name.

R'Bear sits next to him. "Just making sure you aren't going to kill us in our sleep," he says.

"I wouldn't," Il-ya reassures him. "I told you and all of your kin today, I mean no harm. My own tribe was killed by the rocks that glow, and I seek another."

"The rocks that glow," R'Bear murmurs. "I've heard of them. They are stars that fell from the sky one day, long ago." He points across the way, somewhere in the distance that Il-ya can't see. "It is why the Meadows are forbidden. Did your tribe wander in the Meadows?"

"There are many places that hold the rocks that glow," Illya says. "We may have wandered in the Meadows, we may have not."

R'Bear gazes across to the Meadows. "Tomorrow, they will decide what you must do if you are to stay," he says. "If you survive until the next sunset, you will be one of us. But the elders are not always fair. If they don't want you to stay, they will send you to the Meadows, and you won't come back."

"I'll come back," Il-ya promises him, "no matter where I must go. I've walked across two continents to find a tribe who would let me stay, and I can walk no more."

R'Bear stays out with Il-ya that night while Il-ya tells him stories of hunting the great tiger, of walking across the wind-whipped islands to the north and building a canoe when he ran out of land.

"Did you have a hunting song for the cat?" R'Bear asks. "We have songs to make us hunt better. We have one for the mammoth, and one for the bear, and we have many for the birds."

"We did," Il-ya says, although it is a lie. His tribe had painted pictures instead, used paste from the glowing rocks to scratch pictures of tigers, yaks, great bony fish...The glowing pictures from the rocks had sometimes made them so lucky that they would not have to hunt, but were able to sit by the doors of their yurts and wait for a wounded yak to stagger into camp. He thinks for a second and twists up his face and hands, making the RAAAWR of a tiger, and recites:

_The wildcat is fast and scary.  
(RAAAWR)  
He's big as you, and very hairy.  
(RAAAWR)  
Do not fight him for his meat  
(RAAAWR)  
Or it is you that he will eat  
(RAAAWR)_

R'Bear's eyes grow wide. "I made it up myself," Il-ya adds proudly, "and it works every time. We don't like to go out and hunt the tiger, but if a tiger comes near..."

"If you can make up songs to keep the cat away," R'Bear says excitedly, "maybe you can make up a song to keep the great bird away." And he tells Il-ya a story he remembers from his childhood. "A shadow from the sky...much too big to be a bird. Its skin shone in the sun. It made a screaming, crashing noise, louder than I've ever heard, and it dove far beyond the Meadows."

The elders convene the next morning, and his sentence is delivered by an old man with bushy eyebrows and eyes that gleam. "Stranger, you claim to have walked far across the world to reach here. If you can walk beyond the Meadows to find the great bird and bring back its beak for us, then you may sleep in our cave, eat of our food, and be as one of us." Il-ya knows that the old man heard R'Bear telling him the story, knows that he's set Il-ya an impossible task, but he agrees anyway.

R'Bear catches up with him as he leaves. "It's not impossible," he tells Il-ya. "Since I'm responsible for you now, I'll come with you. I'll guide you."

"I was planning to leave," Il-ya tells him, "to never come back. The elders don't want me. The tribe doesn't want me. It's only you. What kind of welcome would I ever have?"

"If you can bring back the beak of the great bird, trust me, they will all welcome you. We've all spent so long wondering if it was a dream." R'Bear guides Il-ya along the rocky terrain, and when they come to the swampy meadows, points out where to avoid the glowing rocks. "They all tell me I shouldn't come out here, but it's good to know where danger is. And I haven't died yet." He grins.

Late in the day, Il-ya spots a red gleam in the distance. "Might that be the great bird?" he asks. R'Bear concurs, and they mark the direction it's in, but the gleam is very far away. That night, R'Bear impresses Il-ya by catching a rattlesnake. When it gets cold, they dance beneath the stars to keep warm.

They reach the great bird the next afternoon. Il-ya is unimpressed. "It's a pile of rubble," he says, "nothing more." He picks up a sheet of coppery metal, smooth and warm in his hands. Rust has already eaten holes through it, like bugs through a leaf. But R'Bear is happily wandering through the wreckage.

"Look!" He holds up a twisting tangle of metal. "Do you think it's the guts of the bird?"

Il-ya shakes his head. "It's not a bird," he says. "The Before People made it." He tells R'Bear of the Before People, of the stone statues and ancient devices they left, rusting and rotting across the landscape of his home. "Sometimes, if you touch them, they move. Or explode." He rummages through the debris and picks out two pieces of bright bent metal. "Does this look like a beak to you? It looks like a beak to me."

"But if they were the Before People," R'Bear says, "then why did we see it fly? If there are no more Before People, why was there one now?"

Il-ya says nothing, but a familiar glowing from the other side of the bird's false metal body distracts him. He wanders over to it and picks up the source. It's a metal box, the lid closed, but there is a glow that emits from its inside.

R'Bear runs to Il-ya. "Stop," he says. "That's dangerous, the glow, don't touch it--" But Il-ya cannot stop, and when he opens the box, R'Bear is by his side, his face disappearing in the impossible black glow.

*

_They say that cat, he had nine tails  
(Me-YOW, me-YOW, me-YOW)  
And man, that cat could really WAIL! _

Illya slaps the clock radio silent before the saxophone solo can begin and awaken them even further. He glances at the glowing hands of the clockface. It's an hour earlier than he thought Napoleon set the alarm, but that's all right. He and Napoleon can have some time in bed together before they have to wake up and catch their flight back to New York.

Napoleon, of course, is still snoring. Illya nudges him in the side. "Wake up," he says, and Napoleon complies, his face slack and dreamy with sleep.

"Early," he mutters.

"It's when you set the clock for," Illya says, "and you were the one who insisted I take this side. If I have to be awake, so do you."

Napoleon sighs and pulls Illya close to him. "Well, then, how do you suggest we wake ourselves up?"

Illya thinks of the notes he took on Hildebrandt's invention, lying on the table. He thinks of breakfast, the clothes he needs to pack. He thinks of Napoleon's mouth, his arms, their bodies together.

 _I'll have to try not to get killed this time_ , he thinks, out of nowhere. And then the thought is gone.


End file.
